Traffic Light

[Rising Phoenix]

The traffic light simply would not turn green
So the people stopped to wait
As the traffic rolled by and the wind blew cold
And the hour grew dark and late.

Zoom_varoom, trucks, trailers,
Bikes and limousines,
Clatterin' by-me oh my!
Won't that light turn green?

But the days turned to weeks, and the weeks turned months
And there on the corner they stood,
Twiddlein' their thumbs till the changin' comes
The way good people should.

And if you walk by that corner now,
You may think it rather strange
To see them there as they hopefully gaze
With the very same smile on their very same face
As they patiently stand in the very same place
And wait for the light to change.

Shel Silverstein

[hfojvt]

1. I was about seven or eight years old

barely had learned to read. My older sister (age ten, and wow that sounds like child abandonment now) and I were walking in Madison maybe half a mile from my grandmother's house. Trying to cross Washington Avenue and the light seemingly would not change. As we were walking, I, being the prodigious new reader, was reading all of the signs out loud. In a piece of major serendipitious simultaneity, my sister turn to tell me to stop reading all those signs just as I read one that said "push button for walk signal" (being small town bumpkins, we had never seen nor heard of such a thing.) Then she said "what did you just say". I repeated "push button for walk signal" She asked "Where did you see that?". I said "right over there." and so we found the button which would change the tanjed light.

[Rising Phoenix]

2. nice memory...

[fudge stripe cookays]

3. Now THAT'S funny!

And now I actually know the street you mean. Washington is indeed a busy street!

fsc